By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
She asked me for an ice cream machine.
When she said it her collarbones were pronounced.
They were beginning to wilt,
but her skin was the flesh of coconut itself.
By DAVID LEHMAN
[in memory of Paul Violi]
In this my thirtieth year,
Drunk and no stranger to disgrace,
I grin like a fool from ear to ear
Despite the trickle of tears on my face,
Clown that I am, condemned
By Thibauld d’Assole’s command,
Threatened and even damned
By the faker with the crozier in his hand.
By DOROTHY CHAN
Oh, how I crave Bloody Marys at night, tomato and vodka,
kick of Tabasco, spices make everything in life a hell
of a lot better, or at least a hell of a lot more interesting,
and I think that’s what we’re aiming for, and maybe what
I really want is tomato soup, like Andy Warhol used to request
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
June 10, 2018
New York City
This year, the Puerto Rican flag wore black. Only the white star remained. Seeing it dressed in mourning, it was impossible not to feel a knot from your chest to your gut.
“Could you take a picture?” the girls ask, and I jump up from the bench outside the candy store and check they are all here, all thirteen. I am pleased they want a picture together, considering their history, which is fraught and filled with ugliness.
This is their Senior Trip. We’ve only been off the ferry for two hours, and the girls have spent most of that time weaving in and out of the gift shops on Main Street, finally emerging with a concerning excess of commemorative merchandise.
For the picture, they dress in their loot, rummaging through shopping bags to pull off tags and tug new items over their regular clothes—ball caps and sweatshirts and long-sleeved T’s, Put-in-Bay scrawled over the front in block letters or cursive or cartoon fonts, accompanied by graphics of anchors and lifesavers and compasses, in theme with this Lake Eerie Island off the coast of Sandusky, Ohio. The clothing is boxy and not particularly attractive, but the girls sell it because they are masters at posing. “Smile!” I say, and they throw up their arms and jut out their shoulders and squeeze at their waists. They embrace. They grin with their whole faces, which are fresh and round with youth. Posing, they look happy, and this makes me happy. I tell myself that I am seeing their true selves. “Another one!” I say. “Another!”
Josey picks me up at work in a car we bought
together, car she dug out of frozen slush for hours.
She picks me up and gives me roses. Valentine’s Day.
This month The Common offers a selection of poems from the anthology Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, forthcoming in November from Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group.
A POETRY ANTHOLOGY THAT ILLUMINATES EXILE AND DISPLACEMENT
Making Mirrors began on two continents, envisioned by Palestinian poet and aid worker, Jehan Bseiso, and Becky Thompson, a US-based poet changed by months of greeting refugees after their perilous journey across the Aegean Sea.
This anthology uses mirrors to reflect imagistic connections that allow us to see ourselves in each other, those on rafts and those standing on the shore, those waiting/writing in detention and those writing from places of relative safety, those who lift their children to the sky and those whose bodies are at the bottom of the sea.
Snigdha Poonam at a 14th-century stepwell behind her 18-story newspaper office in the heart of Delhi. Photo by Ravi Choudhary.
Your name: Snigdha Poonam
Current city: Delhi
How long have you lived here: Nine years
Three words to describe the climate: hot, cold, extreme.
Best time of year to visit: October-March
Couchville Cedar Glade State Natural Area, Davidson County, Tennessee
My mom has moved to a “senior community” a long drive from my house, but a short drive to my favorite cedar glade. Last night, I slept on the sofa so I could start a hike before dawn. Her new key takes some fiddling, but I sneak outside to meet black sky.
A Dodge pickup tails me hard on new asphalt for new subdivisions (so many) and old pasture (not so many), but when he turns toward the Interstate, I turn away. Pink begins to glow through my open window.
In that year of a shot to the head where were you the first time you broke night?
When you break night, you learn that one puff, under the right circumstance, can give you the right perspective.
You learn to pick up stories that fall & slip on the right side of knowing.
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